OurWorld

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

LA Times:In search of the 'lost ladybug'
"people across North America and Mexico who have become absorbed in an effort called the Lost Ladybug Project, which Cornell University entomologist John Losey started 12 years ago to document the insects and determine why some species are declining."

"A particularly dramatic decline in the 2-spot ladybird was noted, showing a decline by 30% in Belgium and 44% in Britain over the five years following the arrival of the Harlequin. Similar patterns of decline were found in ladybird abundance data (number of individuals) collated from systematic surveys of deciduous trees in Belgium, Britain and Switzerland. The 2-spot ladybird is now near the threshold of detection in habitats in which it was previously common."

help Cornell find the lost ladybugs that are vanishing form our world... now is the i time when hey emerge from wintering and can be found in large groups. See how many different ladybirds you can find.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

"No, this isn't a make-believe place. It's real.Ball's Pyramid in the Tasman sea is located 19 kilometers from Lord Howe Island east of Australia.

They call it "Ball's Pyramid." It's what's left of an old volcano that emerged from the sea about 7 million years ago. A British naval officer named Ball was the first European to see it in 1788. It sits off Australia, in the South Pacific. It is extremely narrow, 1,844 feet high, and it sits alone.

What's more, for years this place had a secret. At 225 feet above sea level, hanging on the rock surface, there is a small, spindly little bush, and under that bush, a few years ago, two climbers, working in the dark, found something totally improbable hiding in the soil below. How it got there, we still don't know.

Here's the story: About 13 miles from this spindle of rock, there's a bigger island, called Lord Howe Island.
On Lord Howe, there used to be an insect, famous for being big. It's a stick insect, a critter that masquerades as a piece of wood, and the Lord Howe Island version was so large — as big as a human hand — that the Europeans labeled it a "tree lobster" because of its size and hard, lobsterlike exoskeleton. It was 12 centimeters long and the heaviest flightless stick insect in the world. Local fishermen used to put them on fishing hooks and use them as bait"

Monday, April 16, 2012

Fly Away With Me-- Butterflies and Caterpillars

Butterfly Conservation 2011 report State of the Decline in UK Species 2011
"Butterfly Conservation and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) findings show 72% of species declined in abundance over ten years and distributions of 54% of butterflies fell, many sharply."

ScienceDaily (Jan. 18, 2012) — Butterflies and birds are no longer able to keep up with climate change. Compared with twenty years ago, butterflies are now 135 kilometres behind the shifting climate zones and birds more than 200 kilometres. This is one of the findings from a study by European researchers published Jan. 9, 2012 in the journalNature Climate Change.

Insects Have 'Personalities' Too, Research On Novelty-Seeking Honey Bees Indicates

"There is a gold standard for personality research and that is if you show the same tendency in different contexts, then that can be called a personality trait," Robinson said. Not only do certain bees exhibit signs of novelty-seeking, he said, but their willingness or eagerness to "go the extra mile" can be vital to the life of the hive.

For Stressed Bees, the Glass Is Half Empty

The findings suggest that it may be possible to study bees as a model for emotion in invertebrates. "If some scientific research on emotion could be conducted in insects, this would lead to a reduction in the numbers of sentient vertebrate animals used in research," Bateson said. "Thus our research potentially has important implications for animal welfare."

"Doing the cuckooing is Martin, one of the five British cuckoos ringed in Norfolk last summer by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and fitted with lightweight satellite transmitters to record their migration to and from their African wintering grounds.

After a tremendous nine-month odyssey involving a double crossing of the Sahara desert, Martin is the first bird to make it back to Europe, and in the last few days has crossed the Mediterranean from North Africa and is currently near the town of Lorca in the Spanish province of Murcia – or to put it in Easter Holiday terms, not far from the welcoming climes of the Costa Blanca.

Depending on the weather, and the absence of accidents, he will probably be back cuckooing in the countryside near Great Yarmouth, where he was caught on 19 May last year, some time in the next 10 days. With various diversions, he will have travelled more than 8,500 miles."

"“The three cases include a 14-pound (about 6 kilogram) male python stretching some 8.5 feet (about 2.6 meters) in length, which they collected near a house in Florida’s Miami-Dade County. The snake threw up 10 guinea fowl eggs soon after it was captured. The team discovered the remains of two bird eggs in another python collected for the study — a female weighing 30 pounds (about 13 kg), with a length of more than 10 feet (3 m),” Welsh added.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

"The nation of Cameroon recently suffered one of the worst mass killings of elephants in years. Up to four hundred fifty of the animals have been found dead in the country’s Bouba Ndjida National Park since January.

A United Nations agency expressed deep concern over the killings. John Scanlon is head of CITES -- the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

A CITES study showed an increase in the number of elephant kills in two thousand eleven. Secretary-General Scanlon said people are killing the animals for ivory – the substance that makes up their tusks. He said the deaths are a major concern not only for Cameroon but for all areas where African elephants live.

MARIO RITTER: The CITES chief said the incident shows that a new poaching problem is taking place. He said poachers are using high-powered weapons to destroy elephant populations. Reports say groups from Chad and Sudan have attacked elephants during recent weeks. The hunters are thought to sell the ivory to get money, weapons and ammunition for armed conflicts."

About Me

find me by searching "pogomcl" I had pages in Suite101 for Fairytales and Parasha for the Stranger; reviews for Midwest Book Review and CompulsiveReader and ran a column for two years, Web Watch by pogo on writethinking.net I wrote some 300 reviews inside two years and 150 articles over on Suite101. Some articles still exist over on Faithwriters.com
It's not such a large portfolio, but much effort.